This has been my recent reading. I don't know Langley's poetry that well, although I've enjoyed what I have read, but you really don't have to know it to get an awful lot out of this terrific book from Shearsman. Langley's eye for the tiniest details of the natural world, in particular, make it constantly surprising.
There's little doubt that keeping the journals must have fed into Langley's poetry-writing process too, though, and it's made me think of keeping one myself. At the moment, I scribble notes down constantly, and I do keep a sort of nature journal, but it's haphazard. I think my New Year resolution, of sorts, will be to make time to write a little in it every day.
1 comment:
I'm with you on this, Matt: Langley is the bomb; I tend to oscillate in my opinion as to whether the journals are better that the poems or vice versa, but they are both absolutely vital and linguistically rich. Carcanet have put out his collected poems recently, and I'd recommend you put it on your Santa letter this year as an accompaniment.
Simon
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